Did Obama Bomb Doctors Without Borders for Opposing TPP?

Had the President of Nobel Peace Prize-winning Doctors Without Borders not warned us of the “imminent threat to global health” posed by the TPP, would these 22 doctors and patients have lost their lives early Saturday?

“I don’t know exactly how long, but it was maybe half an hour afterwards that they stopped bombing. I went out with the project coordinator to see what had happened. What we saw was the hospital destroyed, burning,” describednurse Lajos Zoltan Jecs of the U.S. bombardment of a hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan.

Harsh criticism and skepticism surround what is being labeled an errant U.S. bombardment of a hospital in Kunduz that left 22 people dead — many of them volunteers with Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders, the humanitarian aid agency) — but doubt lingers about the vague official story for a reason.

“Why did they have to blow up the whole hospital?” pleaded Nasratullah, whose 25-year-old cousin Akbar was among doctors killed in the bombing.“We know that the Americans are very clever. If they can target a single person in a car from their planes, why did they have to blow up the whole building?”

The ostensible explanation according to rumor centered on reports Taliban forces had entered the location and were using the cover of the hospital to fire on coalition forces.

Christopher Stokes, MSF General Director, irately stated, “Not a single member of our staff reported fighting inside the MSF hospital compound prior to the U.S. airstrike Saturday morning. The hospital was full of MSF staff, patients, and their caretakers. It is 12 MSF staff members and ten patients, including three children, who were killed in the attack.”

Is something being overlooked?

“U.S. forces conducted an airstrike in Kunduz City at 2:15 am [local time] on 3 October against individuals threatening the force. The strike may have resulted in collateral damage to a nearby medical facility. This incident is under investigation,” stated international coalition spokesperson, Col. Brian Tribus.

“This attack is abhorrent and a grave violation of international humanitarian law,” declared MSF President, Meinie Nicolai. “We demand total transparency from coalition forces. We cannot accept that this horrific loss of life will simply be dismissed as ‘collateral damage.’”

Reports from the scene indicate MSF had not only notified all warring parties in the region of the exact GPS coordinates for the hospital and its outlying buildings, but that doctors immediately notified forces the moment the hospital came under fire from a U.S. airstrike — and, even then, the attack continued for a full 30 minutes.

Stokes found that suggestion wholly inadequate, adding:

“Under clear presumption that a war crime has been committed, MSF demands that a full and transparent investigation into the event be conducted by an independent international body. Relying only on an internal investigation by a party to the conflict would be wholly insufficient.”

If circumstances of any incident appear not to add up, it’s pertinent to thoroughly examine the current narrative for signs the State is attempting to mold public opinion — because it is there you will find the truth that you’re not being told.

In the case of MSF, a massive treaty cum trade deal involving U.S. interests in another part of the world from the tragedy in Kunduz can offer, perhaps, insight which might otherwise seem unrelated. As it turns out, MSF have been particularly vocal critics of the impending Trans-Pacific Partnership — and their criticism hasn’t gone unnoticed.

“It’s not usual business for us, and the reason is because we’re very worried,” explained Judit Rius Sanjuan, whooversees Doctors Without Borders drug access campaign, in a phone interview. “We are doing anything we can to make sure the public is aware.”

Though the Nobel Prize-winning group has actively but reservedly opposed the massive TPP deal for years, recent letters to President Obama and a campaign of subway ads on the D.C. Metro show a more urgent, public push. Sanjuan admitted such a robust effort “is not usual practice for us.”

What is so pressing for the public to know that it led the group to abandon its typically subdued tone?

Simply, drug costs. Specifically, the intellectual property and patent laws that will favor drug companies should the TPP take effect.

Protecting Profit vs. Saving Lives

“It would force them to change the law of many of these countries that are currently negotiating to create new intellectual property protections for pharmaceutical drugs, including but not limited to patents,” Sanjuan explained about the deal as exposed by WikiLeaks in 2013. “The effects of these new obligations would limit generic competition and therefore increase the cost of medicine.”

This has put Médecins sans Frontières “at odds with the White House,” as the National Journal delicately described. A recent letter to Obama from MSF clearly alluded to the humanitarian nature of the group’s opposition to the trade deal:

“MSF believes this is essential to closing the gap in access to medicines to millions of people around the world. The TPP could be an opportunity to make significant progress toward these goals. Instead, in its current state, the TPP is a threat to the health of millions.”

As evidenced in the Kunduz hospital bombing and numerous military campaigns in the Middle East and elsewhere, the human toll likely isn’t the priority first called to mind by the U.S. government.

Profit, on the other hand, must be protected no matter the human cost.

After this attack, MSF decided to pull its operations from Kunduz for the foreseeable future. As Jecs lamented,

“The hospital, it has been my workplace and home for several months. Yes, it is just a building. But it is so much more than that. It is healthcare for Kunduz. Now it is gone. What is the benefit of this? Destroying a hospital and so many lives, for nothing. I cannot find words for this.”

“Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) expresses its dismay that TPP countries have agreed to United States government and multinational drug company demands that will raise the price of medicines for millions by unnecessarily extending monopolies and further delaying price-lowering generic competition. The big losers in the TPP are patients and treatment providers in developing countries. Although the text has improved over the initial demands, the TPP will still go down in history as the worst trade agreement for access to medicines in developing countries, which will be forced to change their laws to incorporate abusive intellectual property protections for pharmaceutical companies.”

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Didn't we "accidentally" bomb the French embassy in Tripoli a decade or so back after the French refused to let us cross their airspace from England to carry out air strike sorties in Libya again Kadhaffi? (...or however the fuck you spell his name)

We blew up an aspirin factory in Sudan, when Bill Clinton was 'not having sexual relations with that woman, Ms Monica Lewinsky'. The funny thing is, the movie "Wag the Dog" was released about 3 weeks before that entire debacle.

I still don't know if the Lewinsky affair was to provide cover for the bombing, or the bombing was to take attention off the Lewinsky affair, but the media certainly were quick to forget all about the bombing of a medicine factory, on the other side of the world!

(BTW, the main character in Wag the Dog is named Stanley, and is based on Stanley Kubrick, who uuh... did some work for the US government, in the late 60s, early 70s AKA Apollo, to take heat off the US war efforts in Vietnam).

The U.S. military did comparable things over and over again. The "chemical weapons" fabric in Sudan has already been mentioned. Or do you remember the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999? The U.S. ridicously claimed it had used an outdated map. So far, they have always come away with it. A clash with a highly regarded international humanitarian organization has the potential to change this record.

Yes, I know about all those, it's like they've ramped up the ridiculousness though... and I won't even talk about the "social issues" of feminizing all men under the age of 25, that's a different rant...

You are not paying attention. The destruction of traditional gender roles is ongoing in both directions for at least 25 years now. You're right; lots of women who are now convinced they have to "be men" to get ahead. Destroys women and more importantly destroys the traditional caregivers for children. Meanwhile, men are now shamed or, worse yet, exposed to the legal system, if they dare to defend their traditional role as assertive and confident decision makers.

You're mistaking "men" for men. Males in today's society are a screwed up lot. That said, women are screwed up too. Political correctness has degraded our culture more thoroughly and more rapidly than many, including myself, ever thought possible.

I vote for the same black ops who shot down Seal team 6. Although, someone (like Iran, the drone hackers) could've hacked the computers and changed the coordinates. The US military would never admit it, if it happened.

I don't think the US was responsible for starting or engineering the Korean war. True, if the US had stayed out of it the Communist North might have swept through quickly and it would have been over with one central government.

Oh, absolutely agreed. He's already known to have bombed wedding parties and all kinds of heinous stuff. But this wasn't who-gives-a-shit-all-those-brown-people-look-alike-to-me deaths. These are doctors doing some fairly corageous stuff to help people for no pay. Including Americans. Little tougher to sweep under the rug.

Then again, I always said Obama could shoot a 10 year old blind girl to death in the Rose Garden and nothing would happen, so maybe I need to listen to my own advice more.

In all honesty, GWB would be getting MUCH harsher treatment in the media for this incident. Not like anything would be done about it, but he'd get raked over the coals by the MSM for months. Obama it's like "oh, well, he didn't push the button himself, so no sense in even talking about it".

You know, back in medieval times, we all know they had Kings. Royalty.

What is less well-known is even then, 500+ years ago, there were KING MAKERS. Yes, thats right, King-makers. People who literally decided who would become King. Once the selection was made, the PR team got to work on the 'royal ancestry' and 'lineage' and 'right to rule' to convince the masses the decision was made in accordance with this or that precedent (Salic Law, blah blah blah).

So in Russia they would 'magically' trace your descent back to Genghis Khan and Ryurik, even if you were a simple serf who became a soldier, and worked your way up. "Well, he was actually the bastard child of XXX and we knew all along, and now that he has been acknowledged/his father has died, its only right that _____ assume the throne as our lawful sovereign."

When you give the Nobel Prize Winner a free pass for his horrific double-tap droning of women and children, he goes on to commit more war crimes with impunity:

Washington’s war crime in Afghanistan

6 October 2015

The massacre of 22 people—12 doctors, nurses and other medical personnel, along with 10 patients, three of them children—in Saturday’s airstrike on the Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) medical center in Kunduz, Afghanistan is an appalling war crime for which the US military and Obama administration are responsible.

On Monday, the top US commander in Afghanistan admitted that a US warplane carried out the deadly attack, while seeking to shift the blame onto Afghan puppet troops for calling it in.

“An air strike was then called to eliminate the Taliban and several civilians were accidentally struck,” Gen. John Campbell told a Pentagon press conference. This account is at odds with the Pentagon’s initial story that US special forces troops had come under fire and called in the airstrike.

The plane involved was an AC-130, nicknamed the “Angel of Death,” a huge, slow-flying aircraft equipped with multiple cannons, rockets and bombs that is capable of circling a target for long periods, delivering devastating firepower. The Pentagon has boasted about this flying fortress’s ability to strike targets with “pinpoint accuracy,” in this case a huge, well-marked hospital.

Survivors of the attack described horrific scenes, with patients burning in their beds and doctors and nurses covered in blood from multiple grievous wounds.

One thing I can guarantee you is that MSF are direct witnesses to numerous war crimes and by virtue of what they do, have direct information on who is supporting whom. The attacks (they have been repeatedly attacked) are in very high probability intentional.

The ostensible explanation according to rumor centered on reports Taliban forces had entered the location and were using the cover of the hospital to fire on coalition forces.

The obviouse question, which nobody is asking, is if they were responding to "Taliban Forces" firing from within the Hospital, how many did we kill, and where are their bodies, or did we manage to kill all civillians and not one of these guys?

It has been four days now and four 'official explanations' - today's version, from General John Campbell, in testimony to a Senate panel, is that: US special operations forces – not the Afghan allies – called in the deadly airstrike on the hospital. Not what he said at yesterday's Pentagon press conference.